Dick Allen: MLB Star Hitter

Dick Allen: MLB Star Hitter

Richard Anthony (Dick) Allen was the first African-American to play for the integrated Travelers baseball franchise in Little Rock. His 33 homers by a right-handed hitter remained a Traveler record for nearly forty years. Fans voted Allen the team’s most valuable player at season’s end. Opening night in Little Rock still featured the tension that the newspapers had hoped to avoid. Marchers, led by White Citizens’ Council leader Amis Guthridge, picketed the ballpark carrying signs that read, “Don’t Negro-ize baseball.” Governor Orval Faubus, a nationally known opponent of school integration, threw the game’s ceremonial first pitch before a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 7,000, including about 200 black fans. As the national anthem played before the game, out in left field, the Travelers’ first black player repeated the twenty-third Psalm to himself. Allen was called up to Philadelphia in September 1963 to begin a fifteen-year career in the major leagues.